Whose Feet Must Walk on the Ground
by hannahsoapy
Summary: His own wings would never lift him up again.


A/N: Tony's always been the most difficult for me to write, for some reason. He just takes a long time to talk to me, even when I know I have something. So, I've had this sitting around written as a series of disjointed scenes, just waiting for Tony to come back and fill in the gaps. Then I guess he decided to pour his soul out, or something.

This does read a bit like (okay, maybe a lot?) pre-slash with Tony/Steve, but if you don't like that, then it's easy to pretend it's not. Anyway, hope you enjoy!

* * *

" _We want men who will fix their eyes on the stars, but who will not forget that their feet must walk on the ground." –Theodore Roosevelt_

* * *

Tony remembered, after his father died, having to go through all the junk in the house, and finding some old film reels. He'd found an old projector, too, and settled down to watch them.

They were of Captain America, of course. (He should've known; Howard never could stop praising the man.)

Tony didn't recognize him, at first. He hadn't seen pictures of Rogers, pre-serum, but there he was: short, skinny, obviously nervous, and with the smallest wings Tony had ever seen on a person. Pure, creamy white, they fluttered behind him, uselessly. Tony had almost choked on his popcorn when he saw them, barely the width of Rogers' own arm-span. How did he even fly with wings that tiny?

He didn't, Tony had realized, with a sort of horror. Rogers couldn't have flown, not with those wings.

Aunt Peggy was there, and a doctor that gripped the soon-to-be national icon's shoulder comfortingly. They stepped off to the side, and Howard moved onscreen, pointing and explaining something to them. The sound quality was terrible; he couldn't make out a word they were saying.

Rogers clambered into the capsule, and it closed down around him ominously.

The sound might have been bad on the reels, but it hadn't prevented Tony from hearing the screams of pain as Rogers took it all, and more.

When the capsule finally opened again, Tony's mouth had dropped at the transformation. Rogers' wings were now massive appendages, and they sprung outwards, knocking over an unsuspecting technician. Howard, Aunt Peggy, and the doctor moved forward, touching his wings with awe. They were that same beautiful white on top, but the bottom half had become a deep, rich red.

Rogers trembled as he looked at them, though, apprehension and wonder warring in his expression. He opened his mouth, but whatever he was about to say was lost to the clear gunshot that rang through the room, the doctor suddenly falling to the ground, dead.

There was chaos, Rogers jumped to the doctor's side, and then the camera tipped over, and the film stopped abruptly.

Tony had scrambled to put the next reel in, but all the others were just spare footage Howard had filmed for Captain America propaganda that never got used. Tony watched those, too, and he'd thought it funny, at the time, how Rogers held his wings like he was trying to make them smaller, scrunching them up timidly, or, on occasion, flinging them out and hitting things as if he'd forgotten their size.

His face was always an echo of the one he'd made coming out of the capsule.

After Afghanistan, he remembered Rogers' face, sometimes, and he laughed bitterly at his own useless wings.

His wings were still there, of course. Reminding him constantly that he was broken. It was an ever-present torment.

He almost wished it had been the terrorists that had done it, and not the shrapnel.

The merchant of death, struck down from the sky by his own weapons. There was no one to blame but himself, and the irony hurt most of all.

The cave, in some ways, had been good for him.

Yinsen had also been flightless, although the Ten Rings had been the ones to maim his wings, and the gentle understanding he'd given Tony had been soothing. He had a battery powering an electromagnet in his chest, and useless wings, and he'd literally die if he didn't get out of there, but the thought of going back to normal life afterwards, with all his new baggage and scars, was daunting. In the cave, he had a friend.

And then that friend, the only man who had ever looked at him with no judgement, only compassion and kindness, died in front of him.

" _You're gonna see your family, c'mon."_

" _I go to fly with them now, Stark."_

Tony had gone out and blown up the terrorist's camp, but he'd wished it was him dead on the rock floor, instead.

He got pity from Pepper and Rhodey, when he got back, when they realized that everything that had happened was permanent. He hated it. They didn't know what it felt like, to look up at the sky and know that he could never escape there again. They didn't know how it felt to look at other people's wings, watch them flutter and fly easily, and know he'd never have that again.

He loved them both, but there was suddenly a chasm between them, and he couldn't fly across it.

"You're so brave, Tony," Pepper had said, her white and black wings anxiously opening and closing. Rhodey nodded along with her, steel grey feathers reaching out, and he'd flinched.

Brave? What did that even mean? He didn't feel brave. He felt shitty. What did they think, he just woke up one morning after three months in that cave and decided, hey, today I'm going to be brave and get myself out of here? No, brave was one thing he'd certainly never felt.

"You got anything you want to add?" He'd snapped at Happy, when they were alone in the car.

"You pay me to drive, not make comments, sir," came the even response. Tony's eyes had shot up to meet Happy's in the rearview mirror. It was better, at least, than Pep and Rhodey's smothering. He'd finally relaxed for the first time since returning home.

The rest of the world remained blissfully unaware. His wings still looked normal-the thick scarring and damaged tissue were hidden under his feathers. He'd been in the cave long enough that those he'd lost had grown back to cover it, although they'd grown back different. His feathers had been hot-rod red, with dustings of gold on each tip. They were still the same colors now, only darkened, burnished, as if when he'd lit the terrorists' camp on fire, the flames had also licked at them.

He could still move them, but it was excruciatingly painful, and his movements were stiff. He did it anyway, as much as possible, gritting his teeth, keeping up the illusion. It was a good thing that late night 'off the wing' races had never been a vice of Tony's. He would've been figured out immediately. Or died. (He'd had Jarvis do a scan, the pressure from even the smallest updraft could snap his remaining tendons.)

He couldn't make half the appropriate gestures, either, although he'd always had an aversion to wing-touching. (It was a well-known symptom of petting and grooming going neglected when young. No surprises there.) He let people assume it was PTSD. Well, and some of it probably was, but it also meant no one would venture close enough to see the scars.

He remembered reading a study once, that said wing 'expressions' made up sixty-one percent of a conversation. Tony discovered that there was a lot of truth to that. People had always looked at his wings askance, but before, it was because his wings had always reflected his thoughts, which were always multitasking. Now they looked because he moved them so little.

Up until Afghanistan, Tony had lived to disappoint his father. Keeping up appearances had been paramount to Howard, and no matter how much Tony had yearned for his father's approval, he couldn't ever seem to get it.

But now, he found himself dragging every 'lesson' his father had ever drilled into him into use. To protect the Stark image. Would his father be proud now, beyond the grave? Probably not. A flightless Stark, no matter that the world did not know, was a disgrace. He was now part of that shameful minority of people whose wings, for whatever reason, were crippled, and despite the world's ignorance of his _condition_ , he felt it.

Tony was fine, he told the media. He was fine, he told his tumbler, filled to the brim with scotch.

Yeah, sure.

Fine.

He told Pep he made the suit because he had a mission to accomplish, weapons to destroy, innocents to protect. And sure, it was all of those things, but it was also because he needed to feel powerful and _whole_ again.

He could soar through the air in his arc-reactor powered suit and pretend he had no flaws. It still wasn't the same, but it was as close as he would ever get.

He built the suit, and tried to reach the stars, but he never quite seemed to make it.

* * *

When he actually met the Star-Spangled Man With a Plan, he had two different versions of him bouncing around in his head. The one that Howard put there, of the perfect man, irritatingly upright, and the one he saw in the film reel-courageous, sure, but also unsure, and… _real_.

The answer was as answers usually are, at least in real life: a combination of both. All of the above. But Steve didn't show him that at first. He came in as Howard's vision, and Tony recoiled from it, and they definitely got off to a bad start.

Afterward, however, in the Tower, once SHIELD and Thor had dragged Loki away, there was a moment of quiet, and somehow Tony and Steve were left together at the top.

Tony saw Steve finally relax, as he hadn't in days. The picture of the happy warrior let his wings droop from their uplifted, confident state, and they seemed to instinctively couch themselves behind Steve's ridiculously huge body, trying to hide.

Tony watched in fascination as Steve became the man he'd watched in the film reel, and suddenly he understood. Cap was only a mask, one facet of himself, that he wore as his shield. Tony would know, better than anyone.

"Sorry," said Steve, who'd caught him staring. Tony wasn't sure why he was apologizing, when he'd been the one rudely gaping at him. Five minutes ago, it would've annoyed him, but now Tony found it actually endearing.

"Do you have somewhere to stay?" Tony blurted. Steve looked confused. To be fair, Tony had surprised himself, too.

"Yeah, SHIELD's- "

"Nope, gonna stop you right there," Tony said, cutting him off. "If SHIELD finds it for you, it'll be bugged, or you'll have spies for all your neighbors. Come live with me."

"What?"

"Come live with me. Here," Tony said again. Steve looked absolutely bewildered.

"I don't think… but why…"

"Okay, first, if you want to live here, live here. Pull out your Cap face and tell SHIELD that. They won't say no to you. Second, I grew up with a father who loved Captain America more than his family, so I can't leave you in a ditch… oh my god, no, not your fault Steve, you're not allowed to do that."

When he'd brought up Howard's obsession, Steve's face had quickly run the gamut straight to guilty. He wasn't sure he'd cleared it up, but at least Steve looked like he might accept his offer now, if his wings' movements were anything to go by.

"I want to get everyone in here," Tony continued, rolling with his somewhat impromptu idea. "I think it's a good idea to keep the Avengers together. Banner's staying already, I told Thor he could come here anytime he's on Earth, and I'm going to try to get Nat and Clint out from under SHIELD's thumb, so it'll be a full house, and-"

"Tony," Steve said, and his face was so serious, Tony thought he would actually get shut down by Captain America, but he glanced at the white-and-red wings now laying sprawled out on the couch behind the super-soldier, and realized Steve wasn't upset.

"Thank you. I think-I think I'd like that."

And then he smiled, and it wasn't really a great smile (the man had a long day, give him a break), but it was genuine, and Tony realized he hadn't actually seen him smile, for real, in this century.

He had a sudden urge to fix that.

Tony smiled back, and tried not to think about his secrets, and how he was screwing himself over _so much_.

* * *

Things changed when the Avengers moved in.

He'd meant it when he said he wasn't a team player. Not because he couldn't get along with others, or didn't like it, it was just that he knew he was a liability. He was the only one on the team whose wings were nonfunctional. (Not to mention the lack of superpowers.)

He couldn't have people relying on him when he was broken. It was easier to push them away himself rather than keep them around and wait for them to leave when they discovered his infirmity.

But the Avengers were the first people he'd felt really accepted by since Afghanistan, and he couldn't help getting sucked in. They were exactly what he'd always needed, and even though he knew it would all be thrown away when they found out he'd lied, that he was crippled (and that was a when, not an if; he knew who he lived with), he couldn't force himself to fully pull away.

He got the Hulk first, before Bruce, even. Post-battle, after his near death via Tesseract-portal, Hulk had glared at him.

"METAL MAN FALL," the green giant had told him accusingly. The green monstrosities of wings he had flapped once in agitation.

"Yeah, thanks for save, buddy," Tony had said, trying to brush it off casually.

"NO MORE FALLING," Hulk had insisted, gently poking Tony's chest, although 'gently' for the Hulk still meant Tony swayed backwards and had to take a step back to balance himself. He'd barked a laugh.

"I'll work on it," Tony told him. "No promises, though."

"HULK CATCH," Hulk rumbled, looking at him intently and nodding.

Tony wasn't sure what to say to that, but he smiled at the Hulk, and tried to ignore his heart trying to crawl up his throat.

Later, when Tony showed Bruce his own personal lab, the man almost cried, and pulled him into a rib-crushing hug.

Thor clapped him on the shoulder and proclaimed himself 'honored to be counted among your shield-brethren', Tony didn't mind that his bones had all rattled under the force, and that Thor's (literally) electric blue wings sent little jolts through him. (When it became a regular thing though, he did begin to worry about his poor joints.)

Tony started calling Steve 'Wing-head' because he couldn't resist it (honestly, that costume begged for it), and then, the first time Steve retaliated with an affectionate, teasing, 'Shell-head', Tony stumbled midair, and went silent on the comms in surprise.

Their third battle together, he blasted a pile of the nemesis-of-the-day's minions off of the spy-ssassin duo, and Clint turned to him with a flutter of purple, and a grin, and said, "Thanks, Stark." Natasha's red and black feathers didn't so much as rustle, but she gave him her trademark half-smile. Tony didn't realize what it had meant until later, when they'd both asked him to upgrade the weapons that they were so protective of.

It hit him then, that he had all these people. They were his friends. He trusted them-as much as he was capable of, anyway. He'd let them see more of himself than anyone else. It was terrifying. It was… nice?

Eventually they'd leave, he knew. They'd smash the tempered glass casing of his heart, but for now, he settled in a limbo of fear and dread and contentment and belonging, and yearned for the stars.

* * *

Things came to a head, like they always did.

He got kidnapped. It was ridiculous, and he had no good excuse for it happening.

They'd used a fancy, high-tech EMP to take out the suit, which he was going to have to look into, because how the hell these people got their hands on this kind of tech was a serious problem. It obliterated all the circuits in the suit (the arc reactor was fine, thank goodness), which activated the emergency lockdown.

As in, they couldn't easily break into it, and Tony was stuck, immobile, inside it. His suit (and himself) had gotten pretty beat up, since he hadn't given in without a fight, but he felt pretty stupid for not noticing he was being corralled into the range of the EMP.

They were trying to break into the suit, but Tony was pretty confident in the invulnerability of his creation, and it wasn't long before the Avengers would arrive, anyway.

Natasha was the one that found him. Voice muffled behind the mask, he directed her to the several hidden buttons and latches that had to be pressed, in a specific order, to release the suit.

"Thanks," he said as he emerged from the useless metal shell, and she gave him a flat stare, tossing him a comm in response.

"I've got him," her voice echoed as he slid the unit into his ear.

"Shell-head?"

"Man of Iron?"

Steve and Thor spoke at the same time.

"Yes," said Natasha, glancing at him.

"Sorry, what was that?" Clint yelled, the sound of explosions flooding the earpiece.

"What about yes don't you understand, bird-brain? C'mon, let's go, I wanna get out of here," Tony finally spoke into the comm.

"Fucking finally," Clint said. "Let's blow this popsicle stand!"

"Language!"

Tony smiled at that, and followed Nat's gestures down the hall, and then, he didn't really know how, exactly, but he was separated from her, probably by her machinations, since he really wasn't in the best state to fight, and there were suddenly no bad guys around wanting him dead.

But he'd ended up stuck on the roof, and the quinjet was down on the ground.

"Stark, do you copy, we're on the west side, wing your way down here!" Steve's voice echoed in over the comm.

"Yeah, I see you," Tony said, and didn't make a move. "Anyone nearby?"

"A bit busy, here," Natasha said, sounding perfectly un-winded, although she was probably strangling someone with her thighs at the moment.

The Hulk roared, unhelpfully.

"Don't worry, Tony, I'm covering you," Clint said, not understanding that it wasn't enemy snipers he was afraid of.

He could hear footsteps coming up the stairwell to the roof, though. The fight would be on him if he didn't move quickly.

"Okay," Tony said. It's fine, he thought, he was only a few stories up, his wings would hold long enough. He could just glide.

He leapt off the building.

They didn't hold up.

About halfway down, they snapped back behind him involuntarily, giving in before they broke, an instinctive self-preservation mechanism that clearly should have been thought through better.

Tony plummeted, quickly.

He heard the cries of his teammates, and Hulk's roar, as they witnessed his fall. It almost made him feel better, that they cared, but then he hit the ground, hard, and all was pain.

* * *

He woke up on the medical floor.

That was fine, the medical staff were the only ones besides Pep and Rhodes that were privy to his medical history, but it was more the fact that he knew who brought him here, who knew his secrets now, that was causing his minor panic attack.

He could see that someone had been there; there was a chair, and a nearly empty glass of water on the bedside table.

Dr. Cho rushed in, answering the call of the machines, and looked at him sternly.

"You're incredibly lucky, Stark," she reprimanded him. "Honestly, concussion and a few broken wing bones, I'm astonished that's all you got out with, but-"

"Can I leave?" He interrupted. She sighed, but nodded, already knowing it would be no use to try to keep him.

"You know concussion protocol, and everything is set, just don't mess with your splints."

Tony left the med floor as quickly as he could, escaping to his lab.

"Jarvis, lockdown," he said, as soon as he entered. He was sure that, at the very least, Steve had an alert being sent to him from med-bay whenever someone left before they were technically supposed to. Tony didn't want to be bothered yet. He wouldn't be able to handle Steve's pitying look. It would be too much, because it would actually be sincere.

During the next hour, all of the Avengers attempted access, and were denied.

He managed to hold out down there for three days, living off Dummy's barely edible shakes and some very stale granola bars he scrounged up, before Steve used the override codes he'd given him. Tony had forgotten about that, and he cursed himself for doing so, as Steve timidly stepped inside his workshop.

"Tony…," the Captain said, cautiously.

Tony headed him off.

"It's fine, Steve." Tony said, hoarsely, trying to pretend as if he hadn't literally cried about this impending conversation for hours. "You can't have a flightless Avenger. It's too risky, I proved that already, it's also terrible for PR if it ever gets out, which, let's face it, it probably will, eventually. You can all still stay here, of course, and-"

"Tony." Steve's voice cut him off authoritatively. Tony startled, his fear and insecurity quickly rising up, jabbing him sharply in his arc reactor heart. "No, Tony… I don't-I'm not here to kick you off the team. Nobody's mad at you. I just… You're incredible, you know that?"

Tony could only stare at him.

"I mean, there were, lots of times, men didn't always come back with their wings, you know? I had it lucky; I went from bad wings to good ones, but… not to say I know how you feel, but I remember, the not having 'em, before, and my soldiers…" Steve paused for a moment, lost in the memory so long ago and so near.

"Never seen anything like what you've done, Tony, that's all I'm sayin', I guess."

Tony had no idea what to say.

"You're not… you're not…"

"I'm not kicking you off the team, Tony," Steve said again, firmly, but gently. "I wish you'd told us that you couldn't use your wings anymore, but I'd be a fool to kick you off this team. You're a huge part of us, Tony, and you're gosh-darn incredible with that suit, you know that?"

Tony was left absolutely speechless. He swallowed, fruitlessly trying to clear his dry throat.

"You coming up for team dinner?"

"Team…"

"Yeah, team dinner," Steve smiled. "I think we're just gonna end up getting Chinese again. I left them upstairs with the takeout menus. You probably got about twenty minutes before it's here. We'd all like it if you'd join us."

He left while Tony was still finding his voice again.

"Jarvis?"

"Yes, sir?"

"End lockdown."

"Of course, sir," his AI responded, sounding pleased.

And, when he finally ventured upstairs, their eyes held no judgement, only love.

Now, Tony knew, now he could reach the stars.


End file.
